5:30am at the bus station and chaos, mayhem, and bedlam are de rigeur. Gonder went one better. The rabble as passengers on our bus route (there's stacks of differant buses) fought over exchanging tickets. The physical bus was changed, the tickets display the bus's number, you have to get a new ticket with correct bus number on it. Don't ask me!
The bus trip to Shire went without organisational hitch. There you change to mini-bus for Axum. The driver refuses to leave until he has another passenger or two. After 45 minutes passengers start to revolt, scream and yell, pile off and start throttling the conductor demanding fare refund. (Luckily a joker we met on the earlier bus translates for us. Our usual way of finding out what goes on.) The police arrive. More screaming and yelling. The driver concedes. We're off. Only to pick up another three who have been waiting just down the road!
The delay means we arrive in Axum in the dark and in the middle of another wicked thunderstorm. Luckily I convince the conductor to drop us outside our hotel as they pass. We are drencehed as we run across the street. Africa Hotel. You little beauty. A comfy room, ensuite with HOT shower. A restaurant. A bar. And NZ$7 a night.
The Goner-Axum trip was about 350km, on dirt road - but we have become well accustomed. The last 300km (!) is on a simply stunning road that winds up, down, and across the most stunning, steep, set of mountain ranges. Just past Debark, the road drops over 2000 vertical meters. The hairpins and drops were near vertical as well. As a downhill mountain bike route I reckon it would every bit rival Bolivia's 'Death Road' we once rode. Then you start winding and climbing all the way back up again. The outside of the windows had a decent covering in spew by the end.
Axum (the modern name, Aksum the ancient). History plus. The Ark of the Covenant.
Courtesy of Philip Marsden (The Chains of Heaven, 2005, Harper Perennial), let me explain:
Aksumawi was the son of Ethiopis, great-grandson of Noah. He established the kingdom of Aksum, the ancestor of modern Ethiopia. Unfortunately a snake took power in Aksum and ruled for 400 years. The snake was 170 cubits in length, has teeth a whole cubit long, and the people of Aksum had constantly to supply it with milk and ... (wait for it) ... virgins. One day a stranger came and slaughterd the snake. The stranger was called Angabo, he in turn became ruler of Aksum.
Angabo married the Queen of Sheba (probably from Yemen), and after he died she left the city with 797 camels to visit Solomon in Jerusalem. There, with Solomonic guile, he suduced her. Back in Aksum she gave birth to a boy named Menelik David), and when he came of age he journeyed to Jerusalem to see his father. When he left Jerusalem he took with him the Ark of the Covenant. With the Ark, the blessing of the Lord was transferred from Jerusalem to Aksum, from the people of Israel to the people of Ethiopia.
And to this day, millions and millions (the population of Ethiopia is 70 million plus, and something like 75% Christian) believe the Ark is still in Axum. But belief (faith) is a powerful thing. True, no explanation has ever been forthcoming as to the Ark's disappearance. The Bible gives no clues. Call me kill joy, but not a cynic, however ... According to Reader, Sheba is a myth apparantly, Aksum did not exist in Solomon times, and was founded several centuries after the Ark's supposed journey from Jerusalem
The Ark, if you are a believer, is at the Axum Cathedral of Tsion Maryam (St. Mary of Zion). Every church in the country has a copy in its inner sanctum. where only monks dare tread. Only one living person at a time has seen the Ark, and he's keping its contents 'mum'. Of course, the belief is that it contains the tablets, the 10 commandments given to Moses. However at big festivals, many of the copies are brought to Axum and paraded along with the real McCoy - and no one knows which one it is. We glimpsed a view of the High Priest who looks after the Ark. I was allowed into the old church, but not Deb. She wasn't even allowed close to the enclosure that fences off St. Mary's. I was allowed to walk around it.
Axum also has stallae fields. We climbed down and walked around the tombs of Kings. The Aksumite kingdom was a true leader. Reader suggests it was one of the first places to use oxen ploughing and that it developed its own language annd written form There's a kind of link: Their earliest writing used be boustrophedon style - that is, ploughing like: acroos one way and next line back the other way.
We found our way, hiking into the countryside, to a monastry on top of a hill where the monk collared us, sat us on a cane mat, and proceeded to read the Bible to us in Ge'ez, the ancient liturgy language, for the next twenty minutes. Emphasising points he considered important. This bible was probably 800-900 years old. Escape was not easy. We, of course, understood Jack, but politely nodded.
The climb to the church of St. Pantaleon (one of Ethiopia's nine saints) atop a rock outcrop was way cool. The ususl thousand year old books - bibles with beautifull full colour, hand painted illustrations, crosses, crowns. A nice little church Deb can visit, but only I can make the climb up the rock to the sixth century church which contains the graves of five kings/saints. Way cool. But Deb doesn't miss much - the ususl guys' stuff: Sky Sport TV, cold beers, dancing girls!
Next day: market day. Camel and donkey trains arrive in town for the commotion that was set up in the mud squalor that was the market. We take a respite in a back-street hole-in-the-wall cafe, incongruiously named 'Paradiso'. It's mid-morning, but the wall clock shows 4:15 (Ethiopian). Its never-never time. A man walks by burdened by the onerous task of carrying an umbrella. His wife walks alongside carrying an obviously heavy, knee buckling sack of something on her head. The coffee tastes beaut.
We visit what is supposedly the remains of Queen Shieba's castle. But there's a fair bit of doubt. Well, not among Ethiopians, but scholars doubt she even existed. Perhaps, she was from Yemen, maybe ...
The term that has to be used is 'living treasures'. Seven, Eight hundred year old paintings are mounted by proping up on the back of a chair. People kneel and kiss them. Up to thousand year old copies of the gospels, church histories, whilst stored in very battered old leather cases, are kissed and leafed through regularly. Hunreds of years old crosses and crowns are piled in church corners. We are regular encouraged to handle the 'oldest books' we wil ever touch - mind you, Deb and I can't help ourselves we treat these things as carefully as possible. It's all so typically Ethiopian, so third world, that this stuff is 'used', not having the historical value we'd place on it.
This is all just becoming mind boggling.
The Reader read (I've been dying to write that) Africa: a biography of the continent (Penguin, 1998) has a vast and extensive content, yet always remains tight and concise. Stunningly informative.
Max
aka Mad
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